Create a piece of fanfiction set in the desert biome!

Be it the whim of the Will’O’Wisps

“Goddamn, it feels like the devil dipped his knob in my bath water!” Remi bemoaned.

His companion cut eyes at him, but otherwise did not react to his whining nor his crude language. He glowered at them, decked head to toe in their rich blue garments, none but their eyes visible beneath the wraps and loose fabric. In the 4 miles of trekking they’d completed, his companion had yet to touch their water or show any signs of being bothered by the heat. Remi on the other hand had guzzled his at the 2-mile mark. He was miserable; the thin undershirt and fiber pants he wore clung uncomfortably to his skin and his gait was constantly shifting in a vein attempt to keep from sticking to himself.

“Better be some pay out, right mate?” This attempt at conversation, like others, fell on deaf ears. “Fine,” he humphed. Next time, he’ll make sure to take the group contract, or better yet, a solo one. He had better banter with his pistol than with this bloke.

Fixing his eyes on the hazy horizon, something seemed to sparkle and dance on the very edges of his eyes reach. Sparks of fires beckoned him from the point at which land and sky met.

“Woah, I think the heat’s getting to me. I’m seeing sparkling fire.”

Thinking his partner would suggest a break, Remi was surprised by their reaction. Stopping abruptly, they pulled the nimcha from their hip, pointing it at horizon; glaring down the blade, they spotted something that made them change directions and speed up.

“Hey!”

 He was not acknowledged.

…………………..

“Oh, praise the lord!” Remi exclaimed as they came upon a small pond.

He stepped towards it, intent on submerging himself to stave off the heat. A strong hand on his elbow stopped him. His head whipped to his companion in confusion and a bit of anger, but they simply pointed at the sky. Remi looked and sighed; the sun would start setting soon. He was not a very well-versed man when it came to the desert, but he knew from a fair amount of warning that it grew surprisingly cold at night. To his relief, his partner gestured to set up camp. At least he would not need to travel any further today.

Remi busied himself with setting up his tent and collecting firewood, whistling to fill the silence that shrouded them. He made quick work and soon found himself watching over the fire he was stroking as the other man set up belled strings around the parameter.

“Those for the bound?” he questioned, although he knew. He was never one for silence. His mother had once said that he was a late talker and that he talked so much to make up for the years he went without. ‘My Remi,’ she’d say, ‘could out-tweet the nightingale, on the early morn none the less.’

For once, he got an answer. Whether they could sense Remi’s growing ire with the lack of comradery or they simply were feeling up for banter, he wasn’t sure. Muted though the response may be, Remi was satisfied when steely grey eyes spared him a glance and a low confirming grunt reached his ears.

Night fell quite quickly and Remi was glad for the fire, as it was indeed cold without the sun’s smoldering heat. His eyes were trained on the two sizable beetles turned on their back atop the flames. Although Remi was not very thrilled by the prospect of eating them, his stomach rumbled as he watched the meat sizzle from the holes cut into the bellies of the insects. Using two sticks, his partner grabbed the beetles from the flames and placed them in little divots in the sand. The hot shells hissed as they met cold sand and were soon tolerable to pick up.

“Ever imagine you’d be eating bugs bigger than rats before your time in the realms?” He questioned as he took the proffered makeshift utensil and grabbed his beetle.

He took a bite, grimacing, it wasn’t awful, but was definitely an acquired taste. Seeing his displeasure, his companion held out a waterskin. He took it gladly, taking a large swig. His eyes watered and he sputtered as the liquid hit his throat.

“Bloody… the hell is that?!” he exclaimed, coughing the strong herbal tasting alcohol from his lungs. “You had this the whole time?!!”

Grey eyes squinted in obvious amusement from beneath the headwrap.

“Oh, you’re funny” he scoffed, but he too was grinning.

…………........

The faintest tingling of bells awoke him. Thinking it was the bound, Remi snatched his pistol and hurried out his tent. There it was again, the dancing fire. It whirled and spun, calling him to follow. As if in a trance, he did.

He stumbled on something. A bottle of blue liquid sat at his feet, chilling his bare toes. Grabbing it, his fingers stuck to the glass.

“Hey, thanks…” the dancing fire was gone when he looked up.

………….........

“Not much further now,” Remi narrated, in a much better mood thanks to the frost potion. He had made peace with the fact that his partner was not much for conversation. To make up for it, he filled their journey with jibber-jabber, the other man didn’t seem to mind.

The cave they were supposed to seek out should be appearing soon.

“Hey!” he started, spotting things from before. Without hesitation, he veered for them.

“Stop!” he heard from behind, but he didn’t. He was too excited to be led to another treasure. By the time he realized something was wrong, it was too late.

Faster than he could process, he was falling. Hitting the ground hurt and he was sure something was broken, but that was the least of his concern. With snarls and growls alerted him to the bound closing in on him.

………….........

Remi found himself waking once again, this time to a cool cloth dabbing his pulsing forehead. He opened his eyes, catching familiar blue garments. However, he was shocked to find an uncovered face.

“You’re a woman,” he rasped.

 The dabbing paused, “yes.”

He observed her mocha skin and striking eyes, “a pretty one.”

Another pause and a gentle smile, “yes.”

“How did you get to me?”

“The wisps.”

“Huh?”

“Your dancing fire, they’re will’o’wisps and they’re fixated on you for some reason.”

“Ah, so they’re my helpers.”

“These things….” She shook her head, “Remi,” stressing her voice as she looked at him with those piercing grey eyes. “They give and they take. Never one, never the other. It is always a game of whim with them.”

“Right,” he grunted, pushing himself up. “We best go then.”

“I’m afraid that might be difficult. The way I came is no more.”

On que the will’o’wisps appeared behind her, as if waiting for those words.

He pointed, “you think they know?”

She looked, letting out a jaded sigh, “This could be dangerous.”

“Do we have a choice?” the look in her eyes gave him his answer, “Right.”

With her help, he stood and leaned against her shoulder.

“So be it the whim of the Will’O’Wisps”

I shared the full story as a separate publication due to space constraints and the inclusion of several pictures. If this is against the rules, please let me know, and I'll copy-paste the content here instead.

The Nightingale Times, Special Edition: Desert Biome Expedition. | Just About Nightingale

by A. F. SturmerIn this special edition of the Nightingale Times, I present to you the first part of an echo log from my latest expedition, where I, A. F. Sturm...

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Pact of The Fae: Let Justice Be Done

“How long have they been at it?”

“Sunset.”

“And how long have you debated helping them …solve their problem?”

“Sunset. But you mistake me, Robin, on who I think needs help in this particular situation.”

“The Elephas does appear to be holding its own at the moment, Cait.”

The erstwhile biology professor lowered her Lee Metford to the sand beneath her and cocked her head over her shoulder to gaze at the spot where the Fae trickster crouched behind her, face hidden behind his glazed mask. 

“You know full well that creature has no hope of survival against men with guns,” she hissed as quietly as possible and appearing briefly contemplative before attempting to smother a growing smirk,”...well, if they do manage to get back to their armory any time soon.”

In truth, while Cait had been observing the scene for some time with bemusement, her trepidation at what would inevitably follow once at least one of the Druids managed to get past their attacker was growing. She knew many survivors would likely do more than side-eye her decision to stay her hand in this instance; why would a human not aid other humans against such an attack? She was certain that even if they had known the context- that these trigger-happy humans had begun to build their homestead in the middle of its territory and had been firing their loud shotguns night and day at every creature to even curiously approach, especially the infant Elephas that now lay silent not some hundred feet away from where Cait hid behind a dune mulling their fate- that they would still judge her harshly for intervening with the grief-stricken mother and saving the lives of fellow humans.

“I fear I must be influencing you greater than I previously surmised,” Puck mused, lowering his head to direct his costume-obscured gaze to her twisted lips.”You are amused at their potentially dire predicament and do not seek to quell the creature’s rage, rather watch and wait.” 

Caitriona huffed and turned away from him to refocus her attention on her targets.

“I regret to correct you here, Trickster,” she retorted, bristling at the implication that her opinion of the impending doom scenario before her was the result of any influence by the Fae, “but my reasons for staying my hand do not stem from the same place as yours, merely waiting to see who comes out on top and throwing in my lot with them.”

Robin’s unexpected laughter momentarily startled her out of her irritation, tickling her ears and annoying her afresh as it also caused particular shivers to creep up her spine, distracting her from her watch. Frustrated, she lowered her weapon again forcefully and turned in the sand to face him and snatch the porcelain from his face, exposing it to the night air. He blinked, the swirling pools of his eyes nebulas in the starry sky framing him, but his smirk remained despite the abrupt change in circumstances.

“Your opinion of me is sadly not unwarranted, Caitriona, but I assure you in the most animated  language that I was not insinuating that you were calculating which side might benefit you to take, but rather that you were seeing the situation with justice in your eyes, which above all things I believe in.”

Holding her gaze, the Puck crouched further into the sand, lying at her side, and brought his face to close her ear.

“But… did you think I would not notice your contingency plan hiding amongst the rocks behind us should you fail to act?” he whispered, the trickster lilt returning to his tone. 

Cait started, and while the darkness would normally swallow any reaction in its shadows, the brilliant shooting star that graced this realm perfectly illuminated her face as it flushed crimson, her eyes shooting to the starlight winking off the barrel of a second Lee Metford rifle just behind a large stone 45 meters further away. 

“I-you- of course, I knew you would,” she all but babbled, clearing her throat and pulling back slightly, eyes still on the spot where her backup plan lay in wait..“Henri is as good a shot as I am… and less hesitant to make a split-second decision if necessary,” she finished stiffly.

At that moment, a loud trumpeting erupted from the event unfolding before them, and both Puck and Cait turned their attention momentarily back to it. Both of the Druids had managed to slip past the rampaging animal and into a nearby ruin whose doorway was blocked by sand, greatly impeding the Elephas’ attempt to exact her vengeance upon them and causing her to bellow repeatedly in frustration. The Fae however was undeterred, and upon hearing Cait speak the name of her companion had very nearly dropped his sly demeanor, if only a fraction. He dipped his face back towards hers, tipping it away from the scene and drawing her attention back to him by his gloved fingertips. 

“Henri…?” His own hiss slid sibilantly into her ears, and she very keenly detected the hint of ire he seemed unable to disguise with his signature sarcasm. 

Cait smirked up at him, gaze sliding from his attempted emotionless mask to the Texan Industrialist adjusting his weapon on the rock. She had benefited from his assistance in a Jana-infested vault the week earlier, and noticing his well-made tech and ability to wield the Fae magic perhaps more creatively than she, had decided to invite him along on a fact-finding mission in this very realm when they discovered the Druid pair under assault. She did not respond at first to Puck’s clear attempt to goad her, but sat silent, letting her eyebrows do the talking. The pair sat in this state, wordless as the sounds of struggle mingled with the quiet hush of the desert wind whispering over the warm sand that blew around them, the grains cascading past their stilled forms like a gentle waterfall. It was she, however, that did break the silence first.

“If you imagine I am to rise to your baiting here, Robin, you know me less well than you think,” she replied, reaching back for her rifle and turning away from him, returning the majority of her attention to the still-routed Elephas.

“Do you recall my last traveling companion? The Druid I met in a Provisioner forest?”

She asked, stifling back a snicker as another Druid’s leg peeked out from the partially blocked doorway, only to be jerked back hastily when the Elephas in its way stomped on the booted foot of it. 

“His negligence, like so many of his remaining Order, led to the retribution by the Eoten he so carelessly hit with his axe, and led me to have to dispatch the poor creature to save his life, amongst others.”

She hesitated but a moment, before looking back once more over her shoulder, looking from Henri in the rocks to Puck at her side.

“Humans and Fae are not the only ones allowed their justice. And I will not make that decision so hastily again.”

Leaning forward, she peered down her sight, tipped her lever, and when the long-expected screams erupted from the ruin ahead… fired.

Warmth.

Leonard Gaspin had not been aware of the cold of the churning portal that he’d stepped into, until his body remembered warmth; the heat of the sun, beating down on him from overhead. It was a fond rejoining at first, that kiss of heat – welcome, to chase away the lingering malfeasance that one could always feel distantly in one’s mind while traversing the darker realms of the Fae. But when warmth became light, became heat, it began to feel more than what was welcome.

It began with two thin panels of cardstock, far better crafted than what one could be expect to scavenge from an abeyance of the Fae Wilds; the first, an intricate conglomeration of odd creatures and tumbleweed, the faint scent of cactus blossom impossibly wafting from it’s freshly inked surface, akin to scientific journaling of what was to come- bizarrely logical, for the Fae. The second card was more to what one expected of their oddities; a mischievous-looking top hat emblazoned across glossy stock, sat atop the architecture of a Greenhouse, mingling more floral notes with first cards own aroma, the heat of both enough to the scald the palm.

Mere moments ago, they’d been placed into the tray of a Portal Machine – a brass and wood construct of wire and gears that had no logic in it’s design, no function, no motivator that should propel the stone archway to which it was affixed, and yet had sparked to life the transitory gate all the same. He’d mistook it as a misplaced paper press at first glance. Of course it wasn’t that, but he was no Realmwalker, and it was not until one truly initiated in the craft had chanced upon him in his shelter of sticks and leaves that he’d considered it any more than he had at first glance.

They’d provided the cards that now propelled him across the planar divide, too – but had been remiss not to mention the queer feeling of dread that pools in the pit of one’s stomach when slotting these cards into the portal-press, exacerbated by impossible fog rolling out of the stone archway, and the darker things drawn to it’s waking.  It had not been the first time the Lawman Gaspin stood at the edge of a churning conveyance – but the first had been with the Pale at his back, fleeing London. That time survival was all that compelled him.

This time, it was salvation that pushed him through.

Through, though, might well be an misapplication of the word, for traversing a portal is not like passing over any common threshold, as if one were stepping through a door. No, instead, it is as if one has fallen forward – as if gravity has lost it’s sense, and by rite of Fey magic and the contract of the Arcana, one’s being is pulled forward to be hurled through the dark spaces in the chasms betwixt Fey lands, until one’s world is othered, and footing found again.

First comes the sensory deprivation of the grey, of churning, swirling grey – and then comes the first hint of where one wasn’t and now is. And now…

Warmth.

The lawman’s boots came down into something soft beneath his feet. He found purchase atop a perilous hill, the soft swirling grey becoming a blinding sky of white and blue. His eyes could not adjust before where he’d embanked revealed itself not solid enough for his weight. The world tipping, gravity righting, and his back met to ground swiftly.

It was a mercy that it was soft and warm, the lark that it was shifting – the initial crash into the bank too gentle to drive the air from him, preserving his breath only for the shout he yelped as he found himself sliding down a dune, sand working it’s way into his nooks and crannies, flooding his jacket as he went, incredulously barking up at the sky for this joke played by the realms. It was only another moment, though, before he’d come to a stop, not ten feet from the edge of the portal platform where he’d stepped past – the dune far more manageable than he’d first so thoroughly explored.

For just a moment he lay there, staring up at the desert sky, at a cruel sun crowning the still-spinning portal behind him, affixed at it’s peak, like some blazing wreath that surely had some deeper meaning, aware that even in these few precious seconds while this realm still fought to chase away the cool, humid air that had followed him through the portal, he was truly beyond his depths.

And then, as though he’d done it a thousand times, stepped through the Realmwalker, the crown of the Sun around his head instead, not the Portal, quizzical expression on their face, as they looked down at him.

The Realmwalker had the grace not mention Gaspin’s reacquaintance with humility as he joined him at the bottom of the sand dune, his descent far more graceful. He offered a hand, and as the lawman stood, for the first time he took in his surroundings.

As far the eye could see, a vast landscape stretched. They were amongst vistas of burnt umber and beige, only the sparsest hints of green on the horizon, thriving sheltered in the shadows of towering cliffs of sandstone. Already, he was falling captive to the majesty of this new realm, besot by the sheer scale of the dunes and desert cliffs that sprouted up around him, edifices of ancient winged beings set deep into their stone, as old as mankind’s memory, or older still. Only the back of Gaspin’s mind  was present enough to notice to the heat sucking the moisture from his lungs with each with each drawn breath.

But his mind preferred the eye, which perceived a broken promise. No matter which way the eye turned, there was no hint of salvation here.

It had not been what the Realmwalker promised.

“You said that we would find civilization here – that Miss Bly had–”

The Realmwalker had already drawn from his coat a spyglass, and offered it forth wordlessly, prepared, gloved hand coming to direct Gaspin’s eye towards the peak of one great pillar of sandstone - a mountain in it’s own right – about a mile off across the dunes.

Hoisting the looking glass to his eye, Gaspin bit back a remark. Had the Realmwalker been less sparing in his words, he might have anticipated, or thought better of this – But the thought is aborted by what he sees.

Atop the cliff were a dozen tents, erected with various colors and types of fabric, traveler’s luggage piled up to shield them from the wind, campfires rising all around. And people. Blessed, merciful, people – working to set up more permanent shelters with lumber and stone. Gaspin will forever be grateful for the Realmwalker’s silence, that he never speak of the choked sob that leaves his lips.

“Wha- Where did they come from? Why here, of all places.” For he could not imagine what would draw so many to a place so unforgiving.

“Simple.” The Realmwalker answers already setting across the dunes, looking back to Gaspin. “They come to the Watch.”